Friday, September 23, 2011

Soul Therapy: Cover Art

I worked for the last two hours (with the pestering of my cohort, Llora) on creating this cover. She really wants me to pay attention to her while she works on our mutual craft blog (as can be seen in the above). However, I am lost in the land of NaNoWriMo, thinking of all the possibilities, everything I want to accomplish before then and within that fateful month of November.

My main character, Jess, is getting more and more flushed out as I think about this, and as I worked on this not so great and still-in-progress cover art. But, I never claimed to be a graphic designer (nor do I want to be, that's really Llora's job). I still have fun messing in Photoshop.

So thoughts so far? I was thinking about making the eye a little bit bigger as well as making it a little less opaque. This probably will not be the final design, unless, of course, I decide to self-publish or epublish myself, but I'll cross that bridge later.

It's still nice to have something to look at, something tangible to see staring back at me (literally) and be able to say "Yes, this book, it's going to be done soon." The small "hopefully" tacks itself onto the end of that sentence, but I think I am more determined than ever. With the excitement from other WriMos on G+, I'm settling into this quiet kind of appreciation. I never thought I would find a group of avid writers after leaving Emerson College (at least one that I could connect with on a regular basis). I feel so fantastic that I think I'm going to treat my body (or kill it) to Del Taco this evening.

The top right is attempt one, the bottom left is attempt two. Haven't settled on one or the other just yet.

I like the upper right one. I am SO not talented with anything like that. The cover I made for the thumbnail for my Camp NaNo novel was -PATHETIC- lol. I am always in awe of folks that have multi-faceted talents. NaNo G+Mo's have inspired me quite a bit too today. I live in a really rural area so it's very awesome to have a group like this where it's not geographically possible. Yay, hive mind!